from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The cost of putting something into space has been getting a bit cheaper over time, but it's still not exactly affordable (unless you count the helium balloons that can reach altitudes of around 100,000 feet or roughly 30 km). The edge of space is generally considered to be about 100 km (~62 miles or ~330,000 feet) up. Here are just a few projects making some progress in getting stuff into space on the cheap.

from the borderline-scams dept

There have been a few stories over the past year or so of Kickstarter projects simply taking products found elsewhere (often China) slapping a new label on them and claiming they're new. This pretty clearly violates Kickstarter rules, which includes the following:

Projects cannot resell items or offer rewards not produced by the project or its creator.

There have been a few cases in the past where this has popped up. Last year there was the Ambiolight and earlier this year there was the machined gamers dice -- both of which were called out by people in the comments as being mere reselling of products made by others already on the market.

It appears that others keep trying to do these kinds of reseller setups, tricking users along the way. A few weeks ago, I saw the projects for "Full of Fuel" external batteries. I have a bit of an obsession with external battery packs, and have been personally using a fantastic Anker Astro Pro 20,000mAh battery -- which looked nearly identical to one of the Fuel of Fire batteries. The other two Fuel of Fire batteries also looked like other external batteries already on the market. Thankfully, plenty of people started pointing out similar things in the comments. The guy behind the project initially defended it, claiming that they had "changed the design" but many didn't believe it. The guy behind the project apparently promised to send a sample to one of the most vocal critics to prove that it was different... but then stopped responding altogether, and the project was cancelled (apparently by Kickstarter).

It appears that something similar is happening with the so-called Rock Smartwatch, which launched with a bit of hype, including some odd claims such as that the watch had 1080p resolution (huh? on a watch?!?) and 4GB of RAM. Some folks quickly pointed out that the watch appeared to be nothing more than a rebranded Z3 watch from China. There was a fair bit of evidence to support this. The creator of the project, "Vak Sambath" first started claiming that he was devastated and suggesting that their manufacturing partner had somehow leaked or made different versions of their work.

Then he started posting a bizarre "defense" in which he claims to have been "in conversations with our engineers, manufacturers and designers" to then explain why it's different than the Z3.

This comment got posted a whole bunch of times... and it also seems to claim that all their work has really been focused on software, suggesting that perhaps they were just using standard Chinese watches and rewriting the software. Of course, if that were true then they should have said so upfront, and his previous claim that seeing the same design elsewhere devastated him and was because of someone in China leaking the designs makes no sense at all. Keep that in mind, because as this story moves forward, there are more and more things that "make no sense at all."

Because, he then posted a different, but equally unintelligible comment claiming those first comments in which he defended the watch weren't really from him, but were because his computer got hacked:

Hey Guys... first and foremost... I'd like to apologize for whatever happened to do. It wasn't me. I wasn't in front of my computer all day. Someone got into my account. When it rains it pours guys. This is the real Vak. My account got hacked from some freaking hot mess reason. This hasn't been easy.

Later he came back and again defended the watch, while admitting that it does not have 1080p, but not explaining why he'd made that claim originally (or apologizing for the blatantly false advertising, which seems like an FTC violation).

Then he tried again by claiming that most people are just too dumb to understand what they're doing, and saying that people "who don't like change" are too critical:

We appreciate kickstarter for allowing small companies to enter new markets with new ideas, that may not be popular with a small sector that does not like change.

The rock is taking a more innovative approach that some may find hard to understand since it is a new direction.

He also keeps talking up patents that the company has, which supposedly distinguishes the watch from its competitors. Except when people in the comments asked him which patents Vak responded by claiming the patents were proprietary so he couldn't share them and telling critics to contact the company's lawyers. Uh, that's not how patents work. If you have a patent it's public. That's one of the key points of a patent in the first place, to disclose to the public. It's possible that they have patent applications that haven't been published yet, but having an application is very different than claiming you have a patented technology.

Then there's his attempt to explain why he won't give a straight answer, claiming that if you email his legal team they'll give answers but that "the comment section is not an appropriate platform to voice speculation, since there are many experts as pyntail,engineers and large companies involved."

I've read this comment over and over again and it's totally nonsensical. First of all, the comments are exactly the right platform for backers to ask these kinds of questions to make sure they're not getting scammed, and no one's asking him to "speculate," but rather to answer some basic questions concerning the product he claims to be selling. How could anyone think it's appropriate when being quizzed about questions on your own product that only you should be able to answer, to instead claim that it's inappropriate to engage in speculation. And, um, if there are many "experts" then that seems like all the more reason to have a full and open discussion.

On Saturday morning, things took an even weirder twist, as Vak suddenly decided to just start posting over and over and over again in the comments pretending that they were getting lots of "great encouragement" from their backers, and those backers were asking questions. So he started answering them, but each time he posted, plenty of critics just kept commenting about Vak's own ridiculous claims and calling out that the whole thing was a scam. And rather than respond, Vak just kept posting the same exact "email answers" over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, perhaps in the faulty belief that this would somehow drown out all those calling him out.

The other odd thing was that some folks noticed that even as a ton of people bailed from the project earlier in the week, there was suddenly an influx of new buyers, according to Kicktraq's data:

But, since Kickstarter shows who backs the projects, some people pointed out that nearly all of the new backers had just joined in December and this was the only project they were backing. For example, here's "Dianne Barrymore" who joined in December, only backed the Rock, and also just happened to post two overly excited comments about it, even after everyone had pointed out the whole thing was likely a scam. Others pointed out that despite all the new backers, the total money raised seemed to be staying about steady, suggesting that many of the new backers may have only contributed the bare minimum of a dollar...

Finally, around noon on Saturday, Kickstarter stepped in and cancelled the deal, at about the same time Vak was insisting the fact that Kickstarter had approved the campaign was proof that it was legit. In an email to backers, Kickstarter's Trust & Safety team admitted that the project clearly violated numbers rules:

A review of the project uncovered evidence of one or more violations of Kickstarter's rules, which include:

A related party posing as an independent, supportive party in project comments or elsewhere

Misrepresenting support by pledging to your own project

Misrepresenting or failing to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator

Providing inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of our partners

Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part.

Either way, I expect we'll see more of this sort of thing happening over time, but it's kind of neat to see the community itself work all of the details out and help out these questionable projects (even as it's funny to see the project creators try to tap dance around their claims).

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Private space technology is becoming ever more affordable. Not too long ago, only large governments were able to send stuff into space. Now, large companies can do it, and even some wealthy individuals can control their own satellite (or their own part of one). Here are just a few (more) interesting projects that suggest satellites will be ever more accessible to regular folks (and not just for satellite TV or internet access).

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Riding a bicycle is a great way to stay fit and healthy, while also helping the environment. For those who feel they need a little assistance on the ground, there are electric bicycles. And then, for those who want to soar above traffic, avoiding congestion, exhaust fumes, and bad drivers, there are flying bicycles. Here are a few examples of some of the latest (totally not dangerous-looking) flying bike prototypes.

from the free-market-research dept

As we've discussed before, one benefit of crowd-funded programs like Kickstarter is the massive amount of market research you can gather from potential customers. Whether the project is unsuccessful, or whether you're the ridiculously successful Double Fine, the feedback you get can assist with everything from wooing other investors to building new ideas into your product. Making the latter even more useful, Kickstarter-style projects can actually let you do this kind of thing on the fly, building in features based on backer feedback, resulting in an ultimately more appealing end-product for the largest number of customers.

“One of the cool things is we have the opportunity to think about it and address it because we brought it to the community,” says [Double Fine's Brad] Muir, suddenly grinning. “We brought it to a broader group of people, and then there were some people who brought it up and wanted to talk about it. There’s a raging thread on our forums.”

So hurrah, hugs and well-muscled sexytimes for all. This, Muir figures, is the optimal outcome. Everybody wins, and then they all get married.

The coupling of Kickstarter's platform and Double Fine's actions is the very blueprint of CwF+RtB. If you can manage to check any ideological feelings about gay marriage at the door, from either side of the debate, this is pure market feedback resulting in a product more potential customers desire. Muir notes that they didn't preclude gay marriage in their game consciously. It simply never came up. Comments on their project alerted them to this, as well as providing a clear desire from many gamers that this kind of option be included, so they went back and put it in. More notable, Muir seems to think this all would have gone much differently under a more traditional, game-publisher route.

“If we had gone with a publisher on this, I really think [it wouldn't have ended well]. Because you sign the deal, you go underground, you start working on the game, you don’t talk to the community or anybody, and you get so focused on all these other aspects of the game. Just making it work – and all the tactical combat and mechanical things. We might just overlook something like same-sex coupling all the way until we announce the game. And then people say, ‘Hey, what about gay marriage?’ And we’re like, ‘Fuck,’ because we’ve already worked on it for more than a year.”

In other words, this is a direct result of connecting with their fans. And, by being proactive about it, they avoid the kind of mess that other games have had when their stance on the subject is vague. So, regardless of your politics, we should all be applauding Double Fine's ability to listen, engage, and react to the feedback they get from their customers. Is it any wonder they have been so massively successful?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's just something really cool about things that glow in the dark. It's even more breathtaking when the glowing originates from living creatures, like fireflies or deep sea fish. While nature uses bioluminescence for purposes such as attracting mates (or prey), humans seem to be more interested in bioengineering plants or animals that glow by using fluorescent proteins from organisms that produce them naturally. Here are some examples of what people are doing with fluorescent proteins.

from the it-takes-more-than-just-a-kickstart dept

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A lot of the attention given to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms these days has been spurred by the big runaway success stories — the Pebble smartwatch, the Double Fine Adventure, Amanda Palmer's project, and many others that exceeded their fundraising goals in the first few days and kept on climbing. The phenomenon is not limited to these multi-million dollar examples: countless smaller projects have shot past their more modest goals multiple times over.

Whether it's a $500 project that raises $10,000 or a $100,000 project that raises millions, the result for the creator is the same: a stunning success that has the potential to turn into a crisis or an even bigger opportunity, depending on how they handle it.

That's the other side of the double-edged sword that is success on Kickstarter, and it often gets ignored. If you're a creator with a product in the pipeline — whether it's software, hardware, an album, a film or anything else that takes time and work — and your plan is to raise some money while piloting it out to a few hundred people, suddenly having hundreds of thousands of paying customers on your hands can be more daunting than exciting.

Not only does the challenge of order fulfillment become much bigger and more complex (this is where a lot of campaigns fall down), there's also the issue of managing so many expectations. Hundreds of wall comments and private messages (some less polite and more demanding than others) start arriving, all while you're trying to finish the actual work. And that starts the moment the campaign picks up steam — meaning the actual money often won't be arriving for weeks.

A big part of the problem is the relatively lackluster backer management tools found on Kickstarter and similar services. Communication is a huge part of running a successful campaign, since things are bound to go wrong, but backers are almost always understanding as long as they aren't left in the dark. Runaway success projects — or at least the ones that still deliver — tend to move beyond Kickstarter for the hard work of customer management: they take the discussion to their own forums, they set up their own mailing lists and customer request systems, and they move more and more communication to more robust platforms (Kickstarter only offers blog-esque updates and an inflexible survey system). Apart from ensuring that a project delivers its goals on time, there's the fact that most crowdfunding campaigns are also about starting a business, which means hopefully converting lots of backers into repeat customers.

Ultimately, the success of crowdfunding campaigns seems to come down to how well the creators build and manage a community — and currently the crowdfunding platforms themselves can only play a small part in that.

from the real-data-debunking-bogus-theories dept

Last week, in writing about the silly backlash to Zach Braff's successful Kickstarter project, we noted that he claimed he had the data that showed his success did not take away from other Kickstarter projects, but rather it appeared that Braff brought a lot of new people to Kickstarter, many of whom went on to fund other projects. But still, the ridiculous arguments persisted that somehow famous people using Kickstarter take away money from upstarts. It's as if these people don't understand what a non-zero sum game is. They assume, incorrectly, that if one (famous) person is succeeding, it means one (non-famous) person is not. Perhaps the worst example of this was a piece by Reginald Nelson at TheWrap which ridiculously attacks Kickstarter's founders, arguing that these moves harm "the creative class."

The Veronica Mars and Zach Braff projects have brought tens of thousands of new people to Kickstarter. 63% of those people had never backed a project before. Thousands of them have since gone on to back other projects, with more than $400,000 pledged to 2,200 projects so far. Nearly 40% of that has gone to other film projects.

We’ve seen this happen before. Last year we wrote a post called Blockbuster Effects that detailed the same phenomenon in the Games and Comics categories. Two big projects brought tons of new people to Kickstarter who went on to back more than 1,000 other projects in the following weeks, pledging more than $1 million. Projects bring new backers to other projects. That supports our mission too.

I'd hope this puts to rest the ridiculous claims, but somehow, I doubt it will (and the comments on the Kickstarter blog post suggest people will still complain anyway).

from the it-makes-no-sense dept

Not this again. Back in 2011, we first discussed why it was silly that some people got upset that someone rich and famous would use Kickstarter, as if the platform was only allowed for unknown artists. That was about Colin Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks, financing a documentary via the site. Since that time, the argument has popped up a few more times, including when Amanda Palmer used the site, when Bjork tried to use the site and when the Veronica Mars movie was funded via the site. Most recently, it's been aimed at quirky actor/filmmaker Zach Braff for his Kickstarter project, called Wish I Was Here. Braff set a goal of $2 million, which was raised very quickly.

And that's when some people got angry. Just as before. But it's a small group of people. There are at least 36,000 people (i.e., those who have funded the project so far) who did not get angry. Why? Because they like Braff and want to support him. I'm curious if the people who are attacking Braff for using Kickstarter ever have watched one of his TV shows or seen a movie he was in. Because, in that case, they'd be paying the same sort of thing... but most of that money would be going to a giant corporation, rather than to the actor himself. So what are they complaining about?

Frankly, he's more defensive in that video than he needs to be. He's got nothing to be defensive about. He notes, accurately, that he's long been known as someone who engages deeply via social media, especially Twitter and Reddit where Braff has been active for years. He also talks about his own obsession with Kickstarter, and how great it was to get the various updates on projects he'd funded, and how he hoped his fans would enjoy getting updates about the movie making process. And, yes, he's backed a bunch of projects himself, including the Aaron Swartz documentary.

For the life of me, I can't see a single logical argument for why people are upset about this, other than (a) they don't like Braff or (b) they're jealous of him. Neither seems like a particularly compelling reason for why Braff, or any famous person, shouldn't use the platform. The two most common arguments seem to be "he's rich and should fund it himself." But that's stupid. First off, he's probably not quite as rich as you think, and second he's made it clear over and over again that the budget is much higher than the amount he's raising and he's putting in an "ass-ton" (his quote) of his own money as well. Also, if you think that, don't fund him. No sweat off your back. For his fans who like him and want to support him, so what? The second argument is that this means he gets the money instead of some struggling filmmaker. However, as he himself has pointed out, the data suggests something entirely different:

I have something every detractor doesn’t have: the analytics. Most of the backers of my film aren’t people on Kickstarter who had $10 and were deciding where to give it, and then gave it to me instead of someone else. They came to Kickstarter because of me, because of this project. They wouldn’t have been there otherwise. In fact, a lot of people who didn't know about Kickstarter came and wound up giving money to a lot of other projects too. So for people to say, 'That’s ... up; you’re stealing money from documentaries' is just not a sensible argument.

All he's doing is the same thing we've been arguing for years is the business model of the future: connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy. Braff has done exactly that, and has built up a huge and loyal following who are really excited about this project. As we pointed out when Amanda Palmer raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter or when Louis CK made over $1 million by selling direct off his site, the fans who are buying in aren't disturbed by how much money is being made. For the most part, they seem thrilled to be a part of something amazing.

I think that's the key thing that the detractors simply don't understand. This is about two key things: being part of an experience and a community. It's not about "a movie," but about much more than that. And, even specifically around "the movie," people should be supporting what Braff is doing, because funding it this way means that it's going to be Braff's vision for the movie, rather than a giant Hollywood studio. A few months back, Jonathan Taplin, a filmmaker and defender of the old system, told me during a debate that no real filmmaker would ever use Kickstarter. At the 40 minute mark, he goes on a condescending rant saying sarcastically that "major filmmakers" could never possibly use Kickstarter because "the average" film only raised $10,000. But the average is meaningless for something like this. Furthermore, he goes on and on about (his friend) Martin Scorcese getting to do a movie he wants, and how that would never work via Kickstarter. But we're seeing over and over again the exact opposite. When a star with a big following uses something like Kickstarter, it gives them more ability to make the movie they want without outside interference.

Now we're seeing, quite clearly, that "major filmmakers" can use Kickstarter to do interesting things, and somehow, I get the feeling that it's the same sort of people who insisted they couldn't possibly make it in the first place who are now complaining that they are...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The QWERTY keyboard layout, which was created around 1875, was originally designed to prevent typewriter keys from jamming. This was done by arranging letters that were most commonly used together farther apart. While the QWERTY layout is still used today, it may not be the best layout for virtual touchscreen keyboards, so there have been many efforts to design alternative keyboard layouts. Here are just a few examples.